New figures show residents of the Antrim & Newtownabbey area bin more waste than any other council area in Northern Ireland.

Between January and March of 2018, people in the region threw away an average of 123kg of waste.

It was over one-fifth more than those in the Newry, Mourne & Down region, where the least amount of household waste was binned per capita - with each person throwing away an average of 100kg.

The figures come from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) as part of a quarterly update on waste management.

Mid Ulster, with 111kg of waste per person, and Ards & North Down, with 110kg of waste per person, placed second and third for the council areas for each individual household waste.

The figure takes into account both of household waste sent to landfill - waste put into the black bin - and waste disposed of going towards reuse, dry recycling or composting - anything put into recycling and food waste bins.

Northern Ireland's council districts ranked most to least for household waste per capita:

Antrim & Newtownabbey - 123kg per person

Mid Ulster - 111kg per person

Ards & North Down - 110kg per person

Lisburn & Castlereagh - 109kg per person

Causeway Coast & Glens - 108kg per person

Derry City & Strabane - 108kg per person

Mid & East Antrim - 104kg per person

Armagh City, Banbridge & Craigavon - 103kg per person

Belfast - 101kg per person

Fermanagh & Omagh - 102kg per person

Newry, Mourne & Down - 100kg per person

Figures for the first three months of this year show Northern Ireland councils collected 222,481 tonnes of municipal waste - a drop on the 227,153 tonnes collected for the same period a year previous.

Household waste accounts for 89.3% of waste collected by local authories.

One key metric recorded by DAERA is the municipal waste energy recovery rate, a figure which tracks the amount of value gained from waste products when they are converted into energy.

It is something councils have only been doing since 2009/10, with the Northern Ireland-wide figure growing to 20.1% for the first three months of this year, a slight decrease on the 20.7% for the same period in 2017.

There is wide variation in the effectiveness of Northern Ireland's council in maximising the energy returned from recycled waste.

The highest rate of energy recovery was recorded in Newry, Mourne & Down at 52.1%, a decrease on the 56% recorded for the same period the year before.

Ards & North Down recorded the lowest rate of energy recovery, at 6.1%.

Northern Ireland's council district ranked from the highest energy recovery to the least: